


Once a Year

by SonjaJade



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Child Death, F/M, Gifts, House Cleaning, Mementos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 08:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8743171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonjaJade/pseuds/SonjaJade
Summary: Izumi and Sig remember certain events differently, if at all.





	1. Chapter One

Sig grunts as dust spills down from the top of the hall closet.  He sputters and waves his hands, trying the clear the cloud from his face.  Spring cleaning is always a bitch at their house, seeing how they spend most of their time at the butcher shop these days.  But it didn’t always use to be that way.  He peeks around to make sure Izumi’s nowhere nearby, then tugs a photo album from the back of the top shelf.  
  
He opens the pages, sees pictures his wife demanded he destroy, and smiles on what could have been.  There’s a picture of her standing in front of the doctor’s office, holding the prescription for prenatal vitamins.  She’s wearing the biggest smile he’s ever seen on her face.  In the years after their tragedy, she’s still never smiled that big…  Another picture shows her smoothing her dress close to her body and showing off her growing stomach, just beginning to protrude outward.  Sig’s finger ghosts over the faded paper and he grins to himself, remembering how happy they’d been then.  
  
He flips the page, checking to be sure he’s still alone.  This time there’s a picture of him painting the nursery a pale green color.  Another one where he’s building a crib and scratching his head at the directions.  Yet another where he’s showing off the finished product, and then one with Izumi standing next to him, his big hand resting on her larger belly.  
  
So many images of her stomach growing and Izumi’s face nearly splitting with happiness.  And then the last picture- Izumi holding their stillborn son in her arms, sobbing, yet trying to smile for her baby.  Sig grits his teeth as he forces the salty tears to stay behind his eyes.  He doesn’t want his wife to know he’s kept these pictures, that he still has the sole image of their only child’s face.  
  
He brushes the dust off the album, quickly dusts the shelf off, and jams it back in its hidey hole, far enough out of reach that the only way Izumi could reach it would be to stack two chairs on top of each other.  She might be alright with pretending she had amnesia that whole year, but Sig was determined to never forget.  
  
“You alright?” she calls from the stairs.  “Awfully quiet down there- you better not be slacking!”  
  
Sig grins.  “Yeah, just giving the air a moment to clear a little!  I’m almost done down here!”  
  
“I’m almost done with the guest room!  Let’s take a break for lunch in a sec, then we’ll finish the upstairs together!”  
  
The guest room.  That was the nursery he’d worked so hard on all those years ago…  “Sounds good!”  
  
He turns to the closet, quickly straightening and shaking out the coats and scarves hanging there. He reaches up and pats the leather bound picture book.  “See you next year, Benjamin,” he whispers, then shuts the door.


	2. Atop the Mantle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spring cleaning continues at the Curtis residence, and Izumi finds some things that Ed and Al left behind when they lived with her, and some things she’s sure were thrown out. But she’s so glad they weren’t thrown away after all.

The guest room is practically spotless.  The glass in the windows is sparkling, the lampshades perfectly clean and white, the linens on the beds freshened and the pillows fluffed.  Izumi gathers the little throw rugs up and tosses them into the hallway so she can take them down and beat them on the clothesline after lunch.  She takes a minute to look and be sure everything looks good before heading downstairs, then thinks to look in the chests at the foot of two twin beds that Ed and Al used to sleep in.  Surely whatever’s been in them can be donated to a charity of some kind- she hasn’t looked in them since the Elric brothers left her to commit their sins in the Resembool countryside.  
  
She hums a little tune to herself as she kneels down in front of the chest closest to the door and opens it up.  She laughs to herself upon opening it.  There’s a little seahorse one of the boys had alchemically shaped from a piece of black coal, beautiful in detail, seamless- like it had been chiseled by an artist and not simply transmuted.  That was the mark of an especially talented alchemist, and likely Alphonse’s work.  Ed didn’t have that kind of patience unless it involved spikes and skulls.  
  
Izumi sets it aside and tugs a handful of other little mementos from the nearly bare container.  They were mostly little boy things: marbles, a yo-yo, a comic book, a torn piece of newsprint that had the cinema schedule on it from nearly five years ago, a lone sock that lost its mate…  
  
Izumi separates the garbage from the junk, placing the toys on top of the chest and tossing the rest in her garbage pail.  Then she kneels in front of the other trunk, afraid to discover what Edward may have forgotten.  Instead, when she opens the trunk, she sees a very neat pile of blankets, and a small, white silk bag with a folded up note, addressed to her and her husband, lying on the bottom all by itself.  
  
The blankets she recognizes immediately.  She’d received them at her baby shower- beautiful handmade afghans and quilts that never touched her baby’s cold skin.  She knows she asked Sig to get rid of them, but finding them here is kind of a bittersweet surprise.  She picks up the note and recognizes Ed’s scratchy handwriting.  
  
**_Teacher,_  
** **_We found the baby blankets hiding in the linens when we changed the sheets and asked Sig about them.  He wanted us to throw them out, but when he finally told us what they were, we just couldn’t.  Please don’t be mad at him.  We’re so sorry you lost your baby- you and Sig would have been great parents, if Al and I are any kind of measuring stick for that kind of thing.  We were kids without parents and you were parents without kids- seems like we needed each other and maybe we were destined to meet.  We made you a present.  Thank you for everything._**  
**_Edward and Alphonse_**  
  
She unties the strings on the little bag and opens it, her breath hitching.  Inside is a pewter pacifier, perfectly rendered, as the seahorse had been.  A pair of angel's wings had been meticulously engraved upon it, with “Baby Curtis” written under that, and all surrounded in a heart.  Izumi gasps at the detail of it, recognizes it as Ed’s work (the handwriting on the note and the engraving matches perfectly) and tears blur her vision.  Despite his foul mouth, his short temper, his flippant focus and his obsessive nature, Edward was sweet as summer punch when he wanted to be.  She breaks down, clutching the silvery pacifier as she begins to weep, for the son she never got to raise, and the sons she never carried within her.  _All_ her boys are so special to her, and she’s so glad to have them in her life, even if Edward followed in her footsteps and committed the taboo, too.  
  
She hears Sig pounding up the steps at the sound of her crying and she smiles up at him when he bursts into the room, tears rolling from her eyes, unable to get them under control at the moment.  
  
“What’s wrong, honey!?” he asks in a concerned voice.  
  
“Nothing’s wrong,” she says, sniffling.  “The boys left us a gift, all those years ago…  I can’t believe I’m just now finding it.”  
  
She gently thrusts the pacifier and the note into his hands and watches as his tears begin to fall, too.  He sits down and pulls her into his arms, the both of them crying- both touched and relieved that there are still some reminders of their little one around.  All these years, Izumi had been trying to pretend it hadn’t happened, trying not to let the sadness and the madness that had driven her to human transmutation consume her again, always trying to stay one step ahead of the crushing depression and hopelessness of being rendered barren.  She didn’t even see that she’d mothered two boys who needed a mother, that Sig had been a father figure they needed…  
  
They straighten themselves and place the pewter gift on the fireplace mantle, and call Resembool right away to thank the young men whom they’d help raise.  
  
Months later, when Ed reveals Winry is carrying his baby, Izumi packs up one of the blankets and ships it to him, telling him Nana and Papa can’t wait to meet the little angel.  When Al announces twins are on the way for he and Mei, she does the same.  And their mantle would become a collection of metal pacifiers, one with every child’s name on it.


End file.
